People visit a crowded Sahibabad vegetable market on a cold and foggy winter morning. (PTI) The maximum temperature recorded Thursday was 8 degrees below the normal for this time of the year, and was a steep fall from 22.4 degrees Celsius at the Safdarjung weather observatory Wednesday. The western disturbance, which brought rainfall to Delhi-NCR Thursday, caused the dip in temperature with the associated cloud cover and strong winds that reached 30 to 40 kmph during the day. This made Thursday the coldest day in February since February of 2003 when the maximum temperature recorded was 14.3 degrees Celsius. The lowest maximum temperature recorded in February in the past 71 years is 12.3 degrees Celsius on February 1, 1970.
Under the influence of the western disturbance, the Safdarjung weather station recorded around 0.6 mm of rainfall in the early hours of Thursday. The western disturbance, a storm that originates in the Mediterranean Region and is driven by the westerlies, lies over North Pakistan and the neighbourhood.
Moisture from the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal is likely to continue to feed the western disturbance over the next 24 hours, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said in an update on Thursday evening. Cloudy skies and very light rainfall remain on the forecast for Friday.
The maximum temperature Friday is likely to be 17 degrees Celsius and the minimum temperature is likely to settle at 9 degrees Celsius. The maximum temperature is likely to increase to about 23 degrees Celsius by February 7, the IMD’s seven-day forecast indicates. The minimum temperature recorded in the early hours of Thursday was 11 degrees Celsius. Moderate fog is on the forecast for February 5 and 6. Fog is considered ‘moderate’ when visibility is between 200 m and 499 m.
Meanwhile, the air quality remained in the ‘very poor’ category on Thursday, with an AQI of 321, according to the Central Pollution Control Board bulletin. It had been in the ‘very poor’ category on Wednesday as well when the AQI was 319. Intermittent rainfall could lead to an improvement in the air quality on Friday, the SAFAR forecast indicates. At most monitoring stations, the 24-hour average AQI at 9 pm on Thursday was in the ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ categories.
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